


lionhearted

by rainphee



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Blood, F/F, Gore, OC/Canon, Prosthetics, it's femslash february i'm allowed ONE self-indulgent bullshit, not super heavy but there is a great deal of it, okay. okay okay okay you have to be nice to me with this one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-13
Updated: 2020-02-13
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:41:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22686403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainphee/pseuds/rainphee
Summary: There's someone new on Motherbase. Quiet meets her.
Relationships: Quiet (Metal Gear)/Original Character(s)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 30





	lionhearted

Quiet is there on the day that she’s extracted.

She waits on the helicopter, the awkward squares of burning desert sun hot on her back. The parasites hiss and spark under it, their voices soft and sibilant in her head, voices spilling over into each other into a soothing hiss. 

The door slides open. Snake’s boots are heavy on the metal, and he reeks of sand and blood and smoke- he always smells of smoke, but now her parasites jump excitedly at the rank stench of gore. It’s not all his.

Slung over his shoulder is a woman. Snake tries to place her on the floor as gently as he can, but she writhes at the last minute, and hits it hard. Blood spatters across the metal in a grotesque sheet, and Quiet sees bloodied stumps where her arms should be.

Pequod leans back and his eyes widen at the red painting his chopper’s floor. “Snake, you didn’t...?”

“It wasn’t me,” he rumbles. He’s sweating profusely, and his suit is heavily torn. The woman does not move again- her breathing is heavy, and there are strips of bandages across her arm stumps, a rush job. Snake must have had to apply them in the field.

Before he sits down, Snake places something next to Quiet, heavy and clinking metallically against each other. They’re clawed, and enormous- as far as she can tell, they appear to be incredibly unorthodox prosthetics. Each end is stained a deep crimson, and blood leaks from the cupped end, the claws scabbing with more. They were used recently.

Her parasites sing- _Blood blood blood sweet gore she smells like sand like sun like blood-_

“Take us back to base, Pequod, and make it quick,” Snake says, not unkindly. “She needs a medic.”

The engine purrs under their feet as Pequod begins the long flight back to Motherbase. The woman pants, and Quiet sees that her legs have been bound. She stares emptily at the floor, her eyes golden like honey and flat as discs. Snake leans back, chews on the end of an unlit cigar, and ignores the blood that’s slowly dripping down his arm and off his fingertips.

When the chopper moves, the arms next to Quiet move with it. They’re brutish, inelegant things, made for the express purpose of destroying, of crushing flesh and bone. One hit from them could probably put a crack in concrete. Snake hadn’t had to chop them off- the hollow part at the top remains hollow, free of the woman’s flesh. They shift again, and she reaches out to steady them.

“Don’t touch them.”

She looks up. The woman is staring at her, with her golden, flat eyes. A panel of sunlight falls through the windows, and onto her face, illuminating her freckles and making her pupils retract to inky pinpoints.

Quiet doesn’t move. The helicopter shifts again, and the arms rattle against her fingertips.

“Don’t fucking _touch them,_ ” the woman growls, and Quiet catches sight of copper in her mouth; metal fangs shoved into her gums.

Snake stomps his heavy boot inches away from her hair, and the floor rattles. “Be nice to Quiet. She’s a friend of mine.”

She spits accusingly on the floor. The fluid is stained red. But she doesn’t speak for the rest of the flight, even when Quiet can’t seem to take her eyes off her.

* * *

Snake himself carries her off the helicopter, through the crowds of watching soldiers. Ocelot is waiting for him, like always; Kaz is off somewhere, probably nursing his missing limbs. Blood drips down Snake’s back as he leaves, the woman staring emptily at the ground, leaving a trail of red circles on Motherbase’s deck behind her.

Quiet assumes they get her to a medic, because people are starting to stare at her, and she’s not awfully fond of that as a rule. She goes back to her cell, sits in silence, checks over her rifle. When the moon rises, she stares at the narrow panels of silver it makes in her room and the parasites hum against her bones, singing of flat golden eyes and copper fangs in soft pink gums.

She’s alone there for a few days. No missions roll out, she’s left to her own devices. One evening, she dissolves to see the sunset on top of Motherbase, and returns to her cell to lie alone in silence.

On the third night, the door to the brig opens. It’s Ocelot, his spurs jangling as he walks, his revolver pressed into the back of the woman with the beast’s arms- the parasites hiss against her will at that, needlessly aggressive, although they tell her that the gun isn’t even loaded. Her sweat-sticky skin-tight clothing is gone, replaced with a tied-off shirt with the Motherbase logo and her arms no longer bleeding. She glares as Ocelot pushes her into the cell adjacent to Quiet's and throws her arms in after her.

“Die,” she spits at him. He ignores her, locks the door and leaves, twirling his revolver on a single finger. Quiet catches his eye as he passes; he merely winks conspiratorially. 

The woman stands alone in her cell. She doesn’t seem to know what she should do with herself. She paces for a few minutes, she kicks the wall for a few more. The arms lie, significantly less bloodied, on the ground, stubbornly ignored by their owner. It’s not like she can put them on by herself, but if she could, Quiet knows that she could easily crush the bars.

“Would you stop staring at me?” That’s new. Quiet tunes in again and those flat golden eyes are staring at her, gleaming with fury. “It’s fucking creepy. At least say something.”

Well that’s a hell of a request, isn’t it. She shakes her head.

“Bastard.”

She reaches up, and signs: _“Can you read this?”_

Those eyes- those flat metal eyes- brighten. “Yeah, I can. You’re mute?”

“ _Yes.”_

“...I’m sorry. You’re Quiet... right?”

“ _I am. Who are you?”_

She goes silent, and the silence stretches on a long time. The woman lowers her head.

“...you can call me Dancing Lion,” she says, so softly that Quiet can barely hear her. “Goodnight, Quiet.”

Quiet doesn’t sleep. She lies, staring, at Lion’s back, illuminated in moonlight, and listens to her parasites sing about the shine in her eyes.

* * *

Lion stays in the brig for three weeks. They communicate, every once in a while, usually when the sun is high and Quiet’s hands are easily readable. Every time, Quiet is left with the memory of her teeth flashing, hot and heavy on her tongue.

Snake starts visiting on the first week. Quiet tends to leave during those times, even though their arguments can be heard across base. She spends her time slipping from shadow to shadow on railings and balconies, throwing pebbles at Kaz and hoping for rain. When she closes her eyes, she thinks about the way that Lion’s hair falls over her collarbone and the shade of her skin on her exposed stomach. Her parasites hop and hum with joy every time, and underneath them, a warm pit, tucked up underneath her ribcage.

One mission, however, she’s called in, and Lion is there too. She approaches the helipad with her rifle slung over her shoulders, her skin popping under the harsh sunlight, and her attention is immediately drawn from Kaz lecturing Snake on the side to the gleam of something metal and new.

Lion sits alone in the copter, her casual clothing replaced with easily movable fabric and her curly hair held back in a thick bush. But what’s more important is her arms- the arms Quiet has never seen, and yet somehow fit on her form.

They are truly massive, dwarfing even Snake’s huge palms with their deadly claws. They look scuffed but relatively clean, and she wields them as if they are just as comfortable as a five-fingered hand, crossing them over her knees as if each is not capable of crushing bone in a single hit. She’s... 

_resplendent beautiful the most gorgeous thing we’ve ever seen sweet delicious Lion..._

She looks up. Her eyes pin Quiet in place- held up by tacks and thorns. It’s very rare that she feels like prey, and not a predator, but under Lion’s golden gaze, she finds she doesn’t mind.

Snake startles her out of her reverie. “Ah, Quiet! You’re here. Good, let’s get going.”

“I still can’t believe you’re bringing _both_ of them on this,” Kaz gripes, limping up to them. “One is bad enough, but doubling the chances of betrayal...”

“Just trust me,” Snake smiles, and he’s like that, isn’t he? Too big and too warm for this cursed life, as he smiles at Kaz like he’s the best thing he’s ever seen. Even Quiet melts a little at that gaze, it’s no wonder when Kaz grumbles but does not press him further.

She doesn’t avoid Lion’s gaze during the flight. She’s not that kind of afraid of her, but she feels like it’s not only her parasites singing at the sight of her now- something deeper, in the scraps of nerves and blood and bone deep underneath the insect life.

And then she gets shot.

The mission goes wrong- of course it does, it always does, why would it not? The resulting firefight is far from stealthy, and in the heat of battle, Quiet feels herself splintering into those sharp-hot-shards of smoke and lethal muscle she’s used to when the parasites get wind of a fight. She moves without thinking, without sound. She strikes, and strikes, and keeps striking, and every time, there’s more blood gobbled up by her hungry skin.

There’s Snake- he’s holding up all right, although she can smell the sharp tang of his smoky blood- he’s been shot, somewhere, probably the arm or brushing the ribcage. But he’s fine, just fine, he’s a big man and he can lose a lot of blood before he goes down. _Rip tear break kill taste Snake’s blood drink him whole-_

It’s who’s next to him that makes the parasites roar in her ears and spike in her veins. Lion is crouched behind the crumbling wall Snake is shooting from, claws digging into the ground, face split in a fearsome snarl. Blood, thick and crimson, drips from the seams where her prosthetics meet her skin, but she ignores it. _Beautiful bloodied fearsome powerful wonderful we love love love love-_

“We have to move!” Snake shouts, in a heartbeat of a pause between gunfire. Their enemies stop, scrambling to reload. He goes first, rolling as swiftly as he can, getting quickly behind cover and gesturing for Lion to follow. She stands, tensing, getting ready-

The air screams with gunfire, and Lion howls.

Quiet smells the sweet sharpness of her blood in the air, tainted with lead.

She blinks, and then she’s across the field, facing a group of three men with assault rifles. Her skin is boiling. Her pupils tighten. One of the men defecates in fear, and she smells the sharp tang of horror amongst them.

_First one- burly but unprepared, go for the throat, unprotected-_

His blood on her hands.

_Second- terrified, easy prey, meat will taste sour but he hurt her and for that the revenge will be all the sweeter-_

His blood on her face.

_Third- he’s pointing it at you but the bullets go right through you and you’ll shatter his ribs in your thousands of teeth for hurting what is yours-_

His blood between her teeth.

And she’s back, back at Snake’s side, where he’s holding Lion and staring at Quiet, somehow not afraid. The bullet went into her side, nearly right through, but it only grazed her kidneys. She’ll live. She’ll live.

On the helicopter back, Lion sleeps, and Quiet watches her. When she stirs, she places her hand on her cheek, as gently as a killer like her can manage. Red smears on her skin when Quiet pulls away.

_I want to touch you and not hurt,_ she thinks. _I want to hear your voice. I want to hear you laugh._

These feelings burrow deeper than the parasites, deeper than her bones, and tuck themselves up in a little package, and light up a place in her chest that was once her heart.

**Author's Note:**

> PLEASE be nice to me about this. i am so sorry but i must indulge myself sometimes
> 
> if you aren't furiously angry at me check me out @rainphee on [tumblr](https://rainphee.tumblr.com/) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/rainphee)!
> 
> and if you actually like lion you can see her toyhou.se [here!](https://toyhou.se/4331468.dancing-lion)


End file.
